Dread Wolf Risen
by Gloria Byrd
Summary: The Veil is gone. The armies of Orlais, Ferelden, the Inquisition, and the Grey Wardens have been defeated. It appears the Dread Wolf has succeeded. The Inquisitor, Rune Lavellan, has been disintegrated by Fen'Harel's forces. However, there is someone behind this plot other than the Dread Wolf, someone who changes everything...


An army of elves, Dalish and city alike, stood behind Fen'Harel. Their eyes were eerie green pinpricks in the darkness. The landscape, once lush, rolling foothills, was now a wasteland. Dust caressed the bodies of the deceased, and silence blanketed all but the wind. Spirits and demons sighed in terror and exhilaration at entering this new plane of existence. Tattered Inquisition banners driven into the Veilfire-scorched ground waved farewell to times of peace. Wind whistled through crevices in tarnished Inquisition armor. Green lightning lit the sky, revealing a jade atmosphere cloaked with black clouds. Dragons whirled in the air, dragons more fearsome than anything Thedas had ever seen.

A single soldier arose from the battlefield. She stood with nearly all her weight on her dragon-emblazoned longsword. She trembled with agony from the many wounds that marked her abdomen, legs, and arm. She fixed her violent, violet gaze on the man before her. She stumbled over the corpses of her former companions as silent tears stained her ash-covered cheeks. Her footsteps, the clanking of her blood-coated armor, cut through the quiet like a sword. Her progress was slow, but her opponents awaited her arrival patiently.

Eventually, she was close enough for the elves to see that she too possessed the pointed ears that had set them apart, the ears that for their surplus inch of cartilage had sentenced them to slavery and separation from humans for thousands of years. She was their kin, and yet her execution was inevitable.

She ambled up the mountain of destruction, the dais of his throne. Her feet rested on the flat surface before the herald of the new age. She held out the sword that had become heavier from both the loss of her arm and the mounting duty that forced her to wield it. She pointed its crimsoned tip at him and bared her teeth in anguish. The tear tracts on her cheeks replenished their paths. Her struggle for words was evident in the twitching of her facial expression and the biting of her lip. The words she had hoped would never come arose and poured out. "Surrender," she breathed heavily, "or I will kill you."

The Dread Wolf's gaze, previously veiled from his downturned head and hooded brow, shifted to look upon his former lover. Gray-green eyes shone wet against his ashen skin. His lips quaked with the slightest, almost imperceptible, motion. He tilted his head to the side and rested his hands on the arms of his forsaken throne. He swallowed as his lips parted, his ears lowering with the softest calm at her presence. "_Vhenan_," he chuckled somberly, "I have done it."

She shook her head. Her dry voice croaked out the words, "How could you do this?"

"I found another source of magic," he explained with excitement adding that familiar flair to his voice. Any other time she would have rejoiced at the brightening of his eyes, the lift of his eyebrows that she adored. She clenched the hilt of her weapon until her joints ached. And then, she released the sword, the weight of it and his words too much to bear any longer. It hit the ground with a clang that echoed across the plain. "How?" The word just barely left her lips.

He realized she was not speaking of the magic. The enthusiasm left his face. "Do you not see that this world will be better than the one of our past? Do you not see that the elves are freed?" He stepped forward and took her shoulders in his hands. A grin overwhelmed his face. It was unnerving to see such a thing from him. "We are _free_! Alive! We can be together, as you wished."

She stepped away. He watched her do so with parted lips. The grin dissolved. She swept her arm across the battlefield. "Do you see what you have done?" she exclaimed. He flinched at her unexpected ferocity but followed her gesture. It was then that he saw the carnage, truly saw it.

But he brushed the past away in favor of what he had always fancied––a dream.

"Never has there been peace without war to usher its coming," he replied consolingly. "They were only human."

"'Only human'?" She whipped around and pointed at him with an accusing finger. "What of Cullen, Josephine, Dorian, Leliana, Cassandra, Blackwall, Vivienne? And all the others, including elves, who died so we can live in gilded floating castles? Varric. Cole. Iron Bull. Sera. The thousands of Inquisition soldiers, Fereldens, Orlesians, and Grey Wardens who died here today?" Her voice broke as she crossed her arms and turned her gaze to the horrid ground. "And to think I _loved_ you."

Fen'Harel did not move. He added, after a while, "It will be a paradise––"

"'The ends don't justify the means!'" Your 'self-sacrifice' and promises of a utopian future do not change the fact that _everyone_ I know and love has died here today because of someone I once called _vhenan_!" She bent to pick up the sword, and as she did so, the army of elves behind him fired blasts of elemental magic. Helpless, Solas cried out for them to cease their fire. The magics collided in a stunning aurora. The colors faded with agonizing sluggishness. When they finished, only a pile of crackling, ice-covered ash remained.

Rune Lavellan awoke with a start. Sweat poured down her face. She surveyed her surroundings. Tent walls around. Cot underneath. Solas rose groggily beside her. She inhaled in alarm.

"What is wrong, _vhenan_?" he questioned as he wiped the sleep from his eyes.

It came back to her. Exalted Plains. Camp. Old ruins. A void stood behind the slit in the tent flap, proof that it was still nighttime. "I . . . it was a nightmare." She pulled her knees up to her chest.

Solas wrapped his arms around her and nestled his head in the crook of her neck. "You are safe now." His wolf jawbone necklace pressed uncomfortably into her ribs. "Would you care to speak of it?"

She swallowed, unsure of what to say. The wolfskins they used as blankets were suddenly unnerving. She finally revealed, "I dreamt of you leading an army of elves against the forces of Thedas. My armies were slain by yours. Everyone was slaughtered. You sat upon a throne of swords." Her gaze drifted into the void. "I told you to surrender, but you thought your cause was just. I-I don't exactly remember what that cause was, but . . ." she pressed her palm to her forehead, "I do recall that I understood it, almost like I had contemplated it for a long time. And I was so, so angry with you. I reached for my sword, and then your army . . ." She shuddered and then shook her head. "It sounds ridiculous now that I say it."

His slow response time alarmed her. "It was simply a dream, one that would best be forgotten." She settled back down into the blankets. He waited for her panicked heartbeats to slow into the alluring rhythm of sleep. He carefully unentwined himself from her and fixed himself in a supine position. He closed his vision off to the roof of the tent as he allowed the Fade to take him in its greedy arms. It dropped him into a secluded area he was familiar with, the domain of a spirit of compassion. It had chosen to make its walls appear to be those of a chantry. Solas grimaced at the sight. Compassion, this time appearing as a young girl, smiled at him from a pew as he approached through the aisle. "Greetings, Fen'Harel." Her voice even matched that of the façade. She stared at him with large, violet eyes.

"Why did you show her?" he practically snarled.

"Why do you choose to be bald when you could grow a handsome hair of locks?" She giggled.

"Why did you show her?" he repeated, his voice grating.

She tilted her head and kicked her feet playfully. "It's wrong of you to deceive her. Why not?"

"I . . . ugh." He pressed a hand to his forehead. "Eons of existence do not give you the right to masquerade as anyone you like. Cease this foolishness and adopt a different form."

"Say 'please.'"

He crossed his arms.

"Say 'please,'" she repeated, her voice rising.

"Please," he acquiesced reluctantly.

"With a cherry on top."

"No."

"With. A. Cherry. On. Top!"

"Fine! With a cherry on top."

"Good enough." She hopped off the pew and in the process, transformed with a blinding light. She now stood before him with the same likeness as Rune Lavellan. Solas's lips parted for a second, but he snapped them shut, replacing his expression with a scowl. Compassion stepped forward gingerly on the soft rug beneath them. His eyes widened. Solas was not surprised by the change in scenery, only by the setting itself. It was Rune's bedchamber. Compassion turned her violet eyes up at him. "This is more than a dream of yours, Fen'Harel. I could make it real, spare the innocent girl from your plans. All you have to do is remain here." Solas shook his head violently and brushed past her. She was nothing like Rune, even when she looked almost exactly like her. "If you are a spirit of compassion, why must you torture me so?"

"More than you will torture Rune by stealing everything from her? I warned her. Do not forget that Cole would fight for her. He is one of the few spirits of compassion. I will protect innocence wherever its rarity can be found."

"My plan will never come close to the horror Rune described."

Compassion recoiled. "You are not the same Fen'Harel who went to slumber for all those years."

"No," he replied, "I am not."

She eyed him for several seconds and then stepped back. "I cannot stop you here."

"I can stop you there. End these dreams. That is my only warning."

She watched him unblinkingly and gestured to the door. He passed her with a darkened gaze as he opened the door to the waking world. A blinding light consumed him.

Solas opened his eyes again to the dark roof of the tent that the sun's first rays had not yet reached. He rolled on his side. Rune breathed so deeply, so calmly now. He tucked a strand of her hair behind her gorgeously pointed ear. He would let no harm come to her.

Surely, he wouldn't.

_If only._


End file.
